Carrying out a Comprehensive Cost Analysis of Classroom and Home Intervention Services for Preschool Children: An Illustration Using the Head Start Redi Intervention

Introduction:  Cost analyses of early childhood interventions can provide important information for improving efficiency of program delivery and set the stage for considering the potential for return on investment. Here we present a cost analysis of the Head Start REDI (Research-based Developmentally Informed) project—an enhanced version of Head Start designed to increase school readiness through broader development of social-emotional and emergent literacy skills. We examine the per-family costs for children receiving either a classroom only program versus children additionally receiving home-visiting services (REDI-P). We discuss implications from our cost estimates for the program in general as well as plans for assessing the cost-effectiveness in the future based on past indication of program effectiveness. We also review the key issues in cost analysis approaches for interventions directed toward young children in preschool settings, and how efforts to increase consistency, transparency, communication, and standards can help the field better leverage cost analysis findings going forward.

Method: Key components necessary to carry out REDI and REDI-P were first identified using the ingredients-based approach to cost analysis. Direct costs were obtained from systematically maintained budgets that track the expenses for the project. Interviews with project leaders helped us determine how to allocate shared costs, and what resources were necessary for the development of the home-visiting component. Essential elements of the program that could not be linked to direct costs in budgets were valued indirectly. Sensitivity analysis was employed to assess anticipated ranges of costs across different implementations and settings.

Results: Results indicate an average per-child cost of $183 to deliver one year of the program in pre-school. Additional costs to implement the home visiting component were estimated as $2,823 per family for the same time frame. We present a range of costs based on a sensitivity analysis, and include a focus on areas expected to drive variation in total and per-family costs in other scenarios (e.g., training costs, home visiting travel cost, coaching needs).

Conclusion: Studies have found that children participating in REDI had lower levels of aggression, increased literacy and better social-emotional functioning compared to a control group. The costs to carry out this evidence-based early educational classroom intervention are modest relative to important outcomes found in these effectiveness studies. This cost analysis has also demonstrated key issues that are important to attend to when executing a comprehensive and rigorous cost analysis that is useful to program developers, policy makers, investors, and other stakeholders.